8 August 2011

Laughing at the Regime

The Moustache Brothers

“Don’t you have dentists in Myanmar?” he asks.
“Oh, yes, we do, doctor,” says Par Par Lay. “But in Myanmar, we are not allowed to open our mouths.” [source]

“For 30 years the three comedians have charmed their audiences and irritated the authorities with their mixture of traditional Burmese clowning and topical satire. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy leader, is one of their fans. Like her, two of the Moustache Brothers have already served long prison sentences.” [source]

Egao 恶搞

“The two characters ‘e’ meaning evil and ‘gao’ meaning ‘work’ combine to describe a subculture that is characterized by humour, revelry, subversion, grass-root spontaneity, defiance of authority, mass participation and multi-media high-tech.… For the time being, intelligent satire remains an increasingly popular method of critiquing [Chinese] politics and society right under the nose of the censorship committee.” [source][more]

The Ministry

“[Popular TV show] ‘The Ministry,’ sends up the nepotism, payoffs and sheer incompetence that are commonplace in the Afghan government.… While frequently compared to the British hit ‘The Office,’ the show has more in common with political satire — more ‘Monty Python meets Afghanistan.’…

The young Afghan writers have all wrestled with ministries at one time or another, and several of the actors work in ministries or in government-owned industries, since acting here is a part-time profession.” [source]